Home is Where the Heart Lies
by Cheria
Summary: The man from the Moon Tribe can afford himself another home closer to the sun.


They gaze and smile his way. He returns the expression.

You - the man from the Moon Tribe, they would say. You are welcome here. Please treat the Plain like your home.

Though their kindness touches him, he finds that he's bitter. A refugee who fled his own accursed tribe to the heavenly realm alone is entitled to no home. No, he is one of the pacifistic fools, cursed to wander the Plain with the illusion of belonging.

There are others, he knows. It would be foolish to think himself the lone living representative of the Moon Tribe. They must have gone to the mortal realm, for where else is there? But the human world is wide and vast, and he would be hard pressed to reunite with anyone down there. He need not go there; he has no desire to leave another "home" for a long time coming.

He lies there on the field of green grass with a bitter, wavering smile. It takes effort to make such a face, and he's much too exhausted in spirit.

The Plain is peaceful like the Moon, but there's a stark difference between their inhabitants. The Moon Tribe had been intellectual, always sifting through scrolls of records and hypotheses for something new, something different. They'd moved faster than they should have allowed themselves; by the time one thing had been made, they'd jumped to another and rendered it obsolete before it had even finished. Too fast. Too fast.

And what a pessimistic lot they'd been, with a chorus of elders chanting thus: They'll sail to their doom, sail to their doom, their doom . . .

The power of divinity is neither a blessing disguised as a curse nor a curse disguised as a blessing. It is both a blessing and a curse.

Yet here, on the Plain, he has yet to receive another prophecy to relay. It could mean many things. He might be dying, might be losing his identity - and that may be for the better.

The Celestials are the day to the Moon Tribe's night. Time slows in their presence, for they live in the present with no thought for ambition. Nothing but their genuine belief in the gods that roam the Plain with them drives them to do what they do. They smile, they laugh, they glide across the plains with an easygoing happiness he can't have fathomed in his earlier days.

With them, everything is so slow that he drifts on the clouds, forever in a state of temporal suspension. There is no change, no progress . . .

Something warm and wet licks his cheek, and he lazily raises a hand to ruffle the mane of the Sun.

"Amaterasu," he mutters. "Tired of the Celestials?"

Amaterasu whimpers. He opens his eyes, drinking in her sunny (but lazy) disposition. Her tongue hangs from her jaw as she pants, the creases of her fur obscuring her vision. He smooths them out and takes a long, good look.

Sitting up slowly, he drawls, "Marco should be wondering where you are. It won't do to keep him waiting, Sun Goddess."

Amaterasu whines again, an awkward sound next to her magnificent image boasting the crimson shading and divine instrument upon her mane. Chuckling, he removes his hand from her fur. He should have never touched her.

True enough, a portly Celestial trudges his way over the fields to them, huffing and panting from a long run. He takes a moment to breathe as the two of them wait patiently. Exhaling deeply, Marco nods amicably at him before turning his attention to the great wolf.

"You're a fast runner as always, Okami Amaterasu. What do you say to another round?" He pauses, but then smoothly adds, "It would be great to have you with us."

He stares expressionlessly, then waves a hand and says, "I pass."

It's no different from the usual routine. He doesn't take to playing with the Celestials much, and they let him be in turn. Still, Marco waits for an additional second in case he would change his mind (which he doesn't) before taking off with Amaterasu, who gives him a glance of her own. They're gone before he can count to five, or was it actually ten?

He lies back down when quiet sets in, but the lonely peace is short-lived when he feels the presence of another Celestial. Soft fingertips ghost over his cheeks, and he taps her wrist with his own. He cranes his neck to the side to see her gentle smile. An exquisite beauty like the rest of her kind.

"What are you doing here, Hakuba?" he asks.

"Well!" she exclaims pleasantly. "You're always off on your own world when we are all right on this one. I don't know why you must be adamant against being openly merry."

He might have taken offense in the past, before he ever came to the Plain. As of this moment, however, he chuckles and answers with quiet appreciation, "Doesn't this man of the Moon Tribe stick out like a sore thumb in your play?"

Hakuba continues to stroke his cheek slowly. She doesn't dare move in to set his head on her lap just yet, nor anytime soon. He knows that she means to keep a distance in deference to his need for solitude - or for something else? He isn't entirely sure.

"And what's so wrong with that?"

He chuckles again. "What is, I wonder?"

"You are needlessly convoluted," she chides lovingly. Her words give him pause, and in that time frame his smile vanishes. It returns just as quickly with his rebuttal.

"I am of the lunar civilization. Overthinking is what we do."

Hakuba moves her hand to her lap, thinking. "Should we be envious?" she inquires with a playful mirth found in most Celestials.

It took one glance at the ark which landed on the heavenly realm for the Celestials to truly grasp the gap between their civilizations. They were quick to accept the fact, and felt little beyond curiosity. They never ask him for an in-depth explanation, seeing as it's beyond their natural understanding and unnecessary. The ark is a grand ship, but also a vessel that carries heavy memories for him, which they're aware of.

He's drifting again, and Hakuba has caught onto this by how she leans in and smiles. The gesture startled him on his first few days, but no longer. He watches back neutrally. Something in his eyes - the Celestials are freakishly good at reading each other - must have betrayed him, for Hakuba's smile saddens and she pulls back.

"You know where we are if you ever feel the need for company," she says in that maternal tone of hers before gliding away.

He turns back to the sky, then rests a forearm over his eyes. The subsequent darkness is nostalgic and, as if mirroring real events, doesn't last. He revels in it for what duration he can, following the faded whites under his eyelids from the earlier exposure to brightness. Because his arm shields his vision from the sun, the darkness is more blue than it is red - more like the moon itself.

The pointed smoothness of the grass beneath him betrays that illusion as it pricks the palm of his hand. It's the one stark reminder of the lie that he doesn't ignore, doesn't do anything about.

Days later in this same position and uncountable hour, a familiar panting breaks his concentration.

"One of these days Marco is going to trip over you."

Amaterasu lets out a roo, a sound that's typically accompanied by the tilt of her head. He can't see it. He can only recall it based on how many times she's gone through the motion in front of him, because he's a curious thing to her. He didn't need the Celestials to tell him that. It's plain in her movement.

It may be fitting that the origin of all that is good is so innocent and honest, if too much, and this cracks a wry smile from him. He rolls onto his side and lowers his arm, opening his eyes to get an eyeful of the benevolent beast before him in all her tail wagging glory.

Amaterasu. Friend and mother to us all.

He doesn't have either of those anymore. He should not think so much.

As though sensing his misgivings, Amaterasu stoops forward and nudges his arm with her snout. He doesn't react beside following her with the shifting of his eyes. Tactless as she might be, she eventually withdraws her nose and proceeds to stare down at him. He sits up.

"Mannerless as always, I see. I suppose the same could be said for me, eh?" He knows what she means, and he shrugs. "They were fine without me. Why change that? The Celestials are not predisposed to such a thing."

That's more than he's said in a long time, and despite the negativity of it, Amaterasu's ears perk up. Realizing what he's instilled in her, he waves a hand dismissively. Uncaringly.

"There's more as to why, of course. But never would I have imagined the Sun Goddess to be so nosy!" he exclaims playfully, spying from the corner of his eyes how she recoils with mild surprise. The Celestials' humor is not as scathing (nor as punny), even in this small direction, and she lacks the experience in it.

She whines and pushes herself against his side. After the third or fourth time, he relents and climbs onto his feet; she runs off just as he does, leaving him to watch her gallop across the fields toward the other side.

"I see what you're doing, Amaterasu . . . ," he mutters aloud. "Fine, fine. I'll follow."

As he suspects, the Celestials all glow when they see him trailing after their god. They don't make it a point to give him a grand welcoming, instead allowing him to join them with neither fuss nor grandeur. He's nowhere as eager or energetic, but their joy is contagious. He knows that Amaterasu knows this will distract him from the destructive thoughts that no doubt heralded the end of his kind. He accordingly puts a lid on that process when Azumi approaches him once he settles onto the ground to catch his breath.

Be them as heavy as Marco or as wiry as Sado, the heavenly race is exuberant and never waning in life.

Man from the Moon Tribe, Azumi says to him. We've been waiting for you. I'm glad you were able to come!

She smiles at him. Through his low pants, he returns the expression.

"Ah . . . It is my pleasure."

For the first time in days and weeks, his heart is at rest - and home.


End file.
